Dirty Mail -- Jul. 22, 2015

General Gameplay

• Reduced the amount of kick when receiving damage, to compensate for the recent update to view-kick functionality.
• Players will now only spawn in game after choosing a Merc, once a map is loaded.
• Deployables are now easier to place in tighter spaces.

Fletcher

• Reclaiming a Sticky Bomb now only returns 50% of the cooldown.

Fragger

• Fixed bug where pressing '4' could cause a Frag Grenade to be thrown.

Phantom

• Phantom's health has been lowered to 110hp (from 120hp).
• Refractive Armor maximum recharge time increased to 10s (from 6s).
• Taking damage that exceeds remaining Refractive Armor energy will now also eat into health.
• Heartbeat Sensor detection no longer disables Refractive Armor, but will still spot Phantom.
• Refractive Armor no longer prevents gas damage from eating into health.
• Refractive Armor is now slightly more visible when Phantom is moving.
• Cloaking/de-cloaking audio is now more audible to other players.

Sparks

• REVIVR now deals the correct amount of damage to objectives.
• REVIVR battery now begins draining immediately, rather than when minimum charge is reached.
• Increased the rate at which the REVIVR battery is depleted while charging shots by 10%.
• Enemy REVIVR shots are now seen as orange in-game.

Ranged Weapons

• K-121 Machine Gun - Reduced spread and recoil by ~5%.
• PDP-70 Automatic Sniper Rifle - This will no longer insta-gib players if it kills with a headshot.
• KEK-10 SMG - Bullet spread now increases ~7% faster than before while firing.
• Crotzni SMG - Bullet spread now increases ~10% faster than before while firing.

Melee Weapons

• Added a turn-speed-limit for melee attacks to prevent exploits and to reward initial aim.
• This will be fine-tuned based on player feedback and metrics.
• Cricket Bat - Reduced run speed when equipped by 2.5%.
• Katana - Reduced run speed when equipped by 2.5%.
• Katana - Secondary attacks now deal damage for a shorter period of time.

Augments

• Chopper Augment melee damage bonus reduced to +15% (down from +20%).
• Lock-On Augment now correctly reduces Turret lock-on times.
• Steady Augment now correctly adds health to all deployables.
• Flying Pig Augment now correctly negates all fall damage.

Game Improvements

General

• Reworked the in-game Mission system.
• XP Mission values updated so Game Mode and Support are now quicker to complete.
• Removed 'Win X Matches' missions as they were incentivizing unbalanced matches.
• Added new missions for Competitive Matches, the Execution Game Mode and Secondary Objectives.
• Updated Merc missions to be based around earning the appropriate XP type instead of playing 'X' matches.
• Clamped a number of video settings to address exploits, such as completely disabling particle effects.
• Updated the auto-detect settings when the game is first run to apply more appropriate graphics presets (High, Med, Low).
• Updated the Competitive Matchmaking algorithm so it spends more time searching for players of closer skill-ratings.

User Interface

• Added Steam related options to the right click drop down panel on the scoreboard.
• Updates to the Spectator HUD:
• Minimap now increases in size and shows all players with the correct team colors.
• Chat has been moved to the top left and players names are also correctly colored.
• Objective HUD is now positioned in the centre.

Visual Effects

• Improved the visual effects when Phantom is shot while his Refractive Armor is active.
• Updated the effects when a player is revived with defibs/REVIVR.
• Updated the REVIVR firing and impact effects.
• Improved the Katana trail effects.
• Made the Orbital Strike effects a little more impressive.
• Updated Skyhammer's Airstrike explosion effects.

Audio

• Added new firing audio for the Blishlok SMG.
• Tweaked footstep audio volume and falloff to make them more audible.
• Improved the mix for all weapon audio, including slightly quieter surface impacts.
• Frag Grenade bounces are now slightly louder when in range.
• Added exertion audio for Sparks when she is incapacitated or killed.
• Added glass sounds for large and medium windows.

Notable Bug Fixes

• Fixed bug where players could be stuck after being revived.
• Fix for players sometimes not seeing the MM ranking in the game overview screen.
• Optimized UI code to aid Minimap performance.
• Removed the silencer from the Selbstadt .40 Pistol icon.
• Fixed several issues with Mounted Gun audio.

-- Source.

• Today the guest was Spike, a User Interface Programmer (works on the HUD and the in-game menus). He is the newest guy at Splash Damage and has been with the company for about a month and a half.
• Today's stream focused on the UI (User Interface) elements of Dirty Bomb as Spike is a UI Programmer.
• Tons of resources are being put towards improving the matchmaking. No timelines, but it sounds like there will be small improvements rolled out at first while they work on big awesome changes.
• No real plans to add features to the mini-map at the moment. They want to improve it, but it didn't sound like it was high priority. They'd much prefer to fix the issues with the map before adding stuff to it.
• No plans on releasing the Echo data collection to the public like heat maps.
• HUD configuration will remain only possible through .ini files until SD adds all the HUD features they want and fix any issues.
• For those who don't watch the streams, shoe makes notes of every suggestion and idea for the team to discuss and look at later. For example, someone suggested to have the ability for medics to reclaim their med packs. Shoe thought it was an awesome idea and noted it down. In general, one of shoe's main jobs is going through reddit, the Dirty Bomb forums, and Steam reviews, collecting ideas and criticism, and relaying it back to the developers. This is how Splash Damage prioritizes what they put in updates.
• Spike actually looks at fan made UI configurations for ideas on how to change the default one.
• In the next update we will absolutely for sure see changes to aim-punch and Phantom.
• Did not reveal what the Phantom changes will be.
• Did not reveal when this update will be other than "soon".
• Aim-punch will be more in-line with what the competitive community wants.
• Coherent UI is getting updates that will fix the hitching players have had.
• There will be updates to the Spectator HUD in the next update. It will be much better according to shoe. The competitive community "will love it".
• Features like private matchmaking have been pushed back due to working on Phantom balancing.
• Weapon stats in numerical form can be found here.
• Dirty Bomb uses Scaleform to create the UI
• shoe plugs three good Dirty Bomb related YouTube channels: WTSFM, LCTR, and NuclearSharkhead.
• While no plans to have an Engie merc be free like Skyhammer and Aura, there will always be an Engineer in the free rotation.
  shoe confirms that the team has been removing some console commands lately. They've found players doing shady things like removing explosive effects and things like trees which would give them an unfair advantage. They understand some of these console commands have helped people get better performance out of the game, but they are currently working on an "Ultra Low" setting that will help out a lot of people with low-end PCs and laptops.
• There was a tutorial link posted to remove the minimap.
• There will be changes and fixes to Sparks including her damage to EVs and bugs in the next patch. They want her to be playable in DirtyCups.
• They are still working on the anti-cheat options. Gave no new information on the topic.
• The Phantom update controversy has increased their desire for a Public Test Realm. It's still in a planning phase though.
• Broken augments are currently fixed and are currently being ran through to make sure everything is perfect before being patched in-game.
• They really want people to be able customize everything about the game from SDKs to UI, but they need to prioritize fixing the game they currently have before letting us create and mess with things.
• ADS sensitivity can be changed in console. They want to add a slider but its low priority with their limited dev resources.
• Fixing bugs will always take priority over adding features.
• When private lobbies get put in the game, they will use community feedback as to which modifiable rules/things players should be able to change in the game. Example given was View Bob and how if the community wanted View Bob to be turned off by default in private lobbies, SD could make it happen.

-- Source.